Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @08:49PM
from the robot-chef dept.

First time accepted submitter almostadnsguy writes "There seem to be a lot of ways to cook a turkey the geekiest ones are probably out of the realm of possibility for normal geeks. However, Within the limits of normal society (or outside if you wish) what is the geekiest way to do it? Do you use a special brine, cook it in an inventive way, or raise genetically modified turkeys with extra legs?"

Encase in 1 ton of copper, dump LHC beams and turkey gets cooked by molten copper. Exceedingly rapid but has the disadvantage that apart from the difficulty in extracting the turkey from the copper it will also be slightly radioactive due to the activation by the beams.

Frictionless spherical turkey. Cook it with blackbody radiation from a heat source. I tried using the friction from a hamster wheel to generate the heat, but the damn frictionless hamster wheel wouldn't generate enough heat. But once they ran fast enough, the hamsters would burst into flames and cook the turkey.

I don’t do anything geeky with the Christmas dinner (I’m Canadian, it’s our next turkey day). Wouldn’t even occur to me to try. I can’t even think of anything one could do that would qualify as geeky, but then I lack creativity.

That's not geeky. That's just from scratch. Some geeks might find doing thing scratch fun, but if that were a universal trait, I dare suggest that the sales of microwaveable Kraft Dinner would probably not be as good as they are.

And my dad does the cooking at gramma's Thanksgiving feast because she can't get around well any more. (Actually, he's more of a waldo that gramma controls from her chair in the living room.) I generally don't venture into snow country this time of year so I mooch off the generosity of friends.

Take the turkey.Pour a bit of the vodka on it.Drink a bit of the remaining vodka.Prepare to put the turkey in the oven.Pour some more vodka on it.Sip some more of the remaininng vodka.Put the burkey in the oben.Taek anohter brink of the vokda.Tuern om the onev at 200 degrees.Whihle waithtng for durkey the to beacome reday, fiinsh the rest of the btotle.Remuove teh rurheyk orfm eht oaven.Clal am aumbuleance to treat yoru bruns.

Take the turkey.
Pour a bit of the vodka on it.
Drink a bit of the remaining vodka.
Prepare to put the turkey in the oven.
Pour some more vodka on it.
Sip some more of the remaininng vodka.
Put the burkey in the oben.
Taek anohter brink of the vokda.
Tuern om the onev at 200 degrees.
Whihle waithtng for durkey the to beacome reday, fiinsh the rest of the btotle.
Remuove teh rurheyk orfm eht oaven.
Clal am aumbuleance to treat yoru bruns.

I count at least two steps involving a terrible waste of vodka for no good reasons.Why do people feel the need to sin on festive occasions??

Are you cooking the turkey to eat it? Because if you are, there's only a handful of time tested methods to do so (in the oven, on the BBQ, sometimes deep-fried in a giant vat of cooking oil or grease). I've watched a lot of cooking shows on TV and I'm by no means an "expert" on this stuff, but every time I see someone working with turkey the formula is always the same- apply heat until cooked, add something else, then consume.

So I'm really not sure what "within the limits of normal society (or outside if you wish)" means. Are you looking for an answer like "I hoist my turkeys 200ft into the air, then shoot at them with improvised rifles fashioned from recycled microwave magnetrons and a focusing coil/antenna I built in my garage"? Or are you looking for an advanced culinary technique that few people use, but can otherwise yield amazing results? That "or outside if you wish" really gets me, because I'm sure there's a civilization somewhere out there in space who cooks their turkeys by loading them into a trebuchet, setting them on fire, then launching them into a volcano where a lone volunteer must venture to retrieve the cooked bird after a set amount of time as some sort of ritual/right of passage. That's outside normal society, right?

I'm trying really hard not to say "just fucking google it", but that's the best advice I can offer. Just. Fucking. Google. It. I'm not even sure why you think most Slashdot folks would know how to cook a turkey- unless you want them to venture out of the basement and go ask their moms.

"Or are you looking for an advanced culinary technique that few people use"

I'd guess this. Food geekery is a valid form of geekery in itself. But you are right, it's a damn turkey.

I guess if I were really going to geek out I'd have to start with a brine Alton Brown style. Then I'd have to Sous Vide the turkey. Most people think you need a machine to do this but you can use a large pot and a candy thermometer to Sous Vide. Sous Vide is just a water bath and will get the entire turkey, dark and white, thin and thick, to exactly the correct and uniform temperature. For those not familiar you actually vac seal the food in Sous Vide so there is no exchange between the food and water, just heat.

Shortly before serving I'd heat peanut oil and cook three pounds of bacon pieces. Then I'd put the still hot turkey into the hot oil for a short time, not to cook it further but merely to brown and crisp up the skin.

Shortly before serving I'd heat peanut oil and cook three pounds of bacon pieces. Then I'd put the still hot turkey into the hot oil for a short time, not to cook it further but merely to brown and crisp up the skin.

I want to watch you try to brown a whole proper Thanksgiving turkey in a few fluid ounces of pork fat. I want to do this so badly that I am willing to pay you to watch your attempt.

Someone else mentioned sous vide cooking - there are a bunch of sous vide turkey recipes. Another is smoking. I sometimes serve a smoked turkey with a pecan sauce. Very nice combination. If I'm going all out there are pastry-enclosed cinnamon apples with a dab of whipped cream infused with Earl Gray tea for dessert.

But the geekiest turkey I ever made was from a recipe I saw on TV (which I just looked for but cannot find). The stuffing had over 10 ingredients, which of course took a long time to do. Once the bird is stuffed, you make up a paste of turmeric and some other stuff and slather it all over. Put it in the oven at 500 degrees, wait for the paste to dry, then apply more paste. Keep doing this until the bird is completely enclosed in a thick hard layer. Then let it cook until it's completely black. You then crack it open and serve. The result was excellent, but was way too much trouble to do again.

Wrap your turkey in C-4 and implode the turkey. The geeky part is getting a perfect implosion so shaping the explosives will take some computer modeling and getting the right detonators is tricky to achieve implosion.

Wrap a coil of 10 gauge or thicker copper wire around a large stockpot to a height suitable for the intended purpose. Remove from stockpot, and attach coil to the charge controller.

Carefully lower the coil over and around the frozen turkey, taking care to assure that the coil does not short, and does not touch the turkey.

Turn the charge controller on, and observe carefully. A mysterious orange glow eminating from the frozen turkey is normal. It may be necessary to throttle back the voltage of the induction coil to avoid incineration of the turkey. Using a frozen turkey improves chances of first time success.

Keep children, pets, and the elderly away from the induction heater at all times, and always wear appropriate protective clothing and safety goggles.

I am not sure that the "cooked" turkey would actually be edible. The sodium brine inside most commercial holiday turkeys would almost certainly dissociate under the imposed conditions inside the turkey, and form free radicals under the imposed excitation. I doubt that an induction cooked bird would be even the slightest bit appetizing.

That wasn't the purpose of the question though. The submitter asked for the geekiest way. Not the most sensible way.:D

I've learned two big things over the years, both from Alton Brown, the geek god of cooking:

- A brine beats injections. I used to inject, now I brine. I don't use his brine recipe though. Mine has the usual salt and sugar, but I also use broth, some apple juice, a cayenne-based pepper sauce (Frank's, Louisiana, etc.), butter and herbs (mostly sage of course). I warm it enough to dissolve everything and get the flavors mingling, chill it, and brine the turkey fully submerged, breast-down overnight. I'm a

"It makes good meat taste like ham."
You're doing it wrong. It shouldn't taste any different.

"BTW, that 155 better be Celsius. It seems high, but any other 155 (K, F, or R) would be horrid."
155F for breast meat is near perfect. Cooked, but still juicy. Some people are freaked out by any hint of pink on the bones. I feel sad for them, but they could cook to 165 or 170 and probably it would not be too overcooked. 155 C would be dried out and inedible.

May have to do it a number of times. I once did something like this on a ocean liner back in 1970s with an apple. It was at nighttime and being a teenager I found the whole vessel activities boring. Spent a lot of time outside on the deck, the portion above the bridge and above that was the antenna mast with a rotating dish (classic oval about 5 ft wide). I threw the apple into its beam and (I didn't catch it, hit the floor) when retrieved it was warm. Was going to do it again but some passenger stopped me.

Microwave it. You only get geek points for this if you actually understand how your microwave oven works, at a very detailed level both in theory and in hardware. Super bonus points if you microwave your turkey from across the yard using a magnetron and parabolic reflector.

Because I imagine "geeky" can mean much more than that. A history buff who researches the traditional cooking methods and ingredients used by the pilgrims, and then sets out to replicate it with a wild turkey that he shoots and cleans would be doing it in a geeky way. A gardening buff who dries his own herbs and spices, and makes his stuffing from scratch with the leftover rosemary bread he baked last week would be doing it in a geeky way. And, of course, the science buff who levitates his turkey with magnets and blasts it with a high powered directed energy canon (dialed down for juiciness) would also be doing it in a geeky way.

Honestly though I'd rather prefer the garden geek's turkey, though it may be too late to plant your herbs now.

Now you may all ask yourself what any of this has to do with turkey, and you'd be right for asking. I wish there was a simple answer but, friends, it ain't simple. It's Thanksgiving.

Alice's RestaurantBy Arlo Guthrie

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and therestaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice'sRestaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice's RestaurantYou can get anything you want at Alice's RestaurantWalk right in it's around the backJust a half a mile from the railroad trackYou can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago onThanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at therestaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in thechurch nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray andFasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot ofroom downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room,seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn'thave to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd bea friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. Sowe took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VWmicrobus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headedon toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across thedump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dumpclosed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove offinto the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of theside road there was a fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of thecliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pileis better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up wedecided to throw ours down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgivingdinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until thenext morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid,we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton ofgarbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." AndI said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelopeunder that garbage."

After speaking to Obie for about forty-five minutes on the telephone wefinally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go downand pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at thepolice officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with theshovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward thepolice officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done atthe police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal forbeing so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, andwe didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us outand told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's stationthere was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we wasboth immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think Ican pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to thequote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town ofStockbridge, Massachusetts, where this happened here, they got three stop

The first method came about from reading that one of the reasons that it is recommended that stuffing not be cooked in the turkey is that if the stuffing is cooked to a safe temperature, the meat is badly overcooked. My solution to this? Cook the turkey (following the usual oven method) with a heat exchanger to help cook the stuffing from the inside. 8 inches of 1" copper pipe, capped at both ends and 10 feet or so of 1/4" copper tubing tightly coiled into a 2-3" coil, and soldered into holes in one of the caps on the larger pipe, and the whole thing filled with water.

The large pipe was inside the turkey, the coil outside and exposed to the ambient oven temperature. The idea was that the oven would heat the water in the coil, and convection would circulate it into the turkey, cooking the stuffing from the inside. It seemed to actually work, too. The downside is the risk that one of the solder joints would fail after the water had heated up to ~300+ F. While that didn't happen the one time I tried it, the risk lead to the device forever after being referred to as "The Turkey Rocket". PS: Don't try this for your first dinner where you're inviting your parents and your girlfriends parents over. You might not survive.:)

Method #2 is a more recent method -- Sous vide cooking. You can't do a whole turkey, and skin of any kind is a bit of a lost cause, but skinless turkey breasts or drumsticks cooked at ~140F for 10 to 12 hours are amazing. More moist and tender than brined, and no risk of being too salty. And with wires everywhere, and an electronically controlled thermometer and heater, cooking doesn't get any geekier.

Get a Weber Smokey Mountain BBQ Smoker or equivalent to smoke the turkey. That's not the geeky part.
Add an ATC (automatic temperature control). This will allow you to set it for precise, unattended low and slow cooking.
Better still, get one with wifi and an internet server like the Stoker Power Draft from rocksbarbque.com. (no affiliation, but I do own one).
You can check and adjust your meat and fire temperatures from inside your home on wifi or remotely via the internet on your smartphone or computer.
It can even email you, or serve twitter updates. Run it with dyndns.org, and give your buddies a simple URL to monitor your cook as well.
Then install Stokerlog to your system, so that you can graph meat and fire temperatures and share temperature graphs with your geeky buddies on the bbq forums.
Use a digital camera and take pictures of the smoke ring (smoke penetration) on a slice of meat. Share it on your favorite photo sharing site.
Lastly, get farkles like an instant read thermometer, (I like the Thermapen), and measure the precise temperature of the meat everywhere on the bird.
The satisfaction, apart from the eating, is taking a stone age process; barbeque; and bringing it into the internet age.
I don't know if you could get geekier than that...

You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, you will play golf, and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."..

And for all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.

Some people feel the need to extend their geek persona into everything (including family stuff).

Personally I'm not so inclined. Christmas (I'm Canadian so that's our next turkey day) and (our) thanksgiving are occasions when I like to put down the tech and spend the day hanging out at my mothers place with family. But I guess if someone wants to make an arduino controlled stuffing management system or something, to each their own!

The right way for geeks to celebrate christmas or thanksgiving day is to not celebrate them at all. Geeks are supposed to be smart enough to not believe in imaginary friends in the sky and to not celebrate the biggest genocide in history eating turkey.

The right way for geeks to celebrate christmas or thanksgiving day is to not celebrate them at all. Geeks are supposed to be smart enough to not believe in imaginary friends in the sky and to not celebrate the biggest genocide in history eating turkey.

The right way for geeks to celebrate christmas or thanksgiving day is to not celebrate them at all. Geeks are supposed to be smart enough to not believe in imaginary friends in the sky and to not celebrate the biggest genocide in history eating turkey.

Speak for yourself. Not being American we don't do the whole Thanksgiving thing, but Christmas and Easter we do. Our Christmas and Easter celebrations have absolutely zero to do with religion, and are instead basically an excuse for the family to gather together and have a good meal and a drink or three.

I don't think you quite understand. They're not religious holidays. They are recognition of the passing of the seasons and the cycle of life. And yes, there may have been multiple deities involved so I suppose you could consider religious in some fashion. But not in the modern sense of Christianity. These holidays were already being celebrated before Christianity and those trying to show folks "the way" incorporated these celebrations to do so as the local population weren't going to give them up. Best to co-op them and basically Christians said: "this holiday means this" where "this" conveniently tied into the whole that was being preached.

Don't mean to offend anyone, Christians or not, but let's recognize that these holidays have been around for a long long time. Longer than Christianity. (Note, not talking about Thanksgiving, as that is not a "religious" holiday although the celebration of a good years harvest goes back many, many years.) This was directed at the comments concerning Christmas and Easter.

There's insecurity at work; perhaps even a hint of madness. Subtle, perhaps, but it's there. A cloying need to identify with a label, regardless of its meaning. Simply replace "geekiest" with another cultural label, and you'll see how unnatural it is. What's the most Christian way to prepare a turkey? Or the most furry? Perhaps the most patriotic? It is a desire to celebrate a simple observation about oneself and inflate it to cartoonish proportions, as if by doing so it is possible to purify out contrary personality traits.

Slowly but tirelessly, the fashion industry struggles to manipulate perhaps the last stronghold of purely rational, socially unaware people: the technically-minded. By trying to play on the reader's insecurity, they hope to drum up a desire to make the reader purchase relevant goods. This is the true cost of the passing of Slashdot to a larger commercial entity.

Hang it above my EICO HF-87 vacuum tube amp and play the LA Phil recording of the music from Star Wars *real loud* Trick will be to catch the drippings so that they don't gum up the EL-34 / 6CA7 tubes. Good thing my AR turntable and HF-85 preamp are well away from the power amp. The result is the clearest sounding turkey possible.

Dunno what options their are down there, but here in Canada lots of places where you can get a free range turkey.

Funny story: first year I did this I placed my order for 2 turkeys (one for thanksgiving and one for Christmas). Picked up the one for thanksgiving and was great, just the right size. Picked up the one for Christmas and it was huge! Like a complete idiot I asked why this one was so much bigger than the first one, to which the farmer replied of course that "it grew..". Kinda funny what a life time of buying stuff from grocery stores does to your brain.

Yes, it's geeky - it's an artificial imitation vaguely-turkey-like product that can only exist because of a combination of complex technologies (including the transportation networks that get the things to the store, and the marketing processes that make it possible to make enough Tofurkey to be profitable.)

And ok, it doesn't taste quite like the real thing, and I'm not actually going to bother. Traditional American Thanksgiving feasts have enough non-meat dishes that you can really just skip the actual tu